For this presentation I will be talking about biking in my hometown Livermore. Livermore used to be a small town but over the years has grown pretty large. This is a map of Livermore and as you can see we have several parks and places that maybe be desirable to bike. However I never really see people riding so I went around and I asked why people don’t ride bikes anymore?
“My kids grew up”
“I got a car”
“someone took my bike”
“I ride the stationary bike at the gym”
“It’s scary because you have to ride in the street with cars”
This got me thinking a lot about several things we’ve been talking about in class. For the person who was scared to ride because they have to ride along with cars reminded me about biking on market street and there plan to extend the bike lanes and prevent cars from driving in the road there as well. Even the person who got there bike taken reminded me of all of the bike theft we have been talking about. It also made me try and think about ways the city can help prevent it. I think that the city of livermore along with other surrounding cities should work with the community to help make the residents feel safer and out riding their bikes more. While interviewing people there were two people who actually told me that they still do ride bikes and they both said that they ride them for exercise. I then asked where they rode and they both just said around their main neighborhood. One also added that this gets pretty boring at times so sometimes she will ride to a nearby park but that she has to be extra careful when doing so. This made me kinda upset. Should bikers not utilize our city parks because they are scared of drivers or should drivers just be more aware of bikers? I thought about the video rules of the road and i asked these people if we had good bicycle infrastructure in livermore they said:
“Yes we have a great park where you can ride” then i asked how they get to the park and they said they bike or drive their bikes there then bike the path and drive home. When i asked if they felt safe riding their bikes they said “yes on the sidewalk” when i informed them that that was illegal they were completely shocked. I then asked people what they did know about bike ways and laws and they all mostly said they stay in bike lanes or on the sidewalk. The did not know about the sharrows or that there are different classes of bikeways. This presentation i was going to teach you about my community from the residence perspective and in doing so i learned a lot about my community as well. I assume that this is the case in many other cities as well and i think there should be some sort of awareness in teaching people so that people all over the bay area feel safe to bike everywhere!